<JeanDavid: From my admittedly limited amount of looking at drawdown for retirement living expenses, it seems that you should limit your percentage of drawdown to half of the average growth rate of the investment strategy. More than that, for all the strategies which I looked at (S&P500, MF4, UV2, UV4+) and you run the distinct chance of running out of money. Less than that, and they all continued to grow over the long term.>

My calculations were strictly those of the Quicken retirement calculator, which looks more reasonable than many I have found on the Internet. For the numbers I put in, you are *guaranteed to run out of money* at age 100. I said she had to promise to die at that age. This is one of the risks one takes. For someone with only $65k to invest and hoping to take out, say $10k/year (I would HATE to try to live on that, with my property tax over $3000/year), this lady cannot possibly afford to live on her capital and have it last in perpetuity. Note that I was assuming a 21% return (doubling the Dow) which may be OK over the years, but risky as a short-term thing.